A Tune on the Brain

It happens to everyone – you have a tune running through your brain and you keep whistling it or humming it or just hearing it over and over again. Elie was home this weekend and several times, we caught him whistling a tune.

“Do you know what you are whistling?” I asked him.

He smiled that funny smile of his, like I had caught him unaware. “Yeah,” he said, and then started again.

He was whistling “Mary had a little lamb.” It was adorable. We “caught” him whistling the tune two other times.

Tonight, I got an SMS on my phone. The Lebanese army fired at an Israeli drone and has warned that if Israel returns fire, things will escalate. In response, Israel raised the level of alert on the northern border to “Gimel.”

“What does that mean?” I asked Elie.

“I don’t know,” he said in that tone that said not so much he didn’t know as it meant very little and he wasn’t particularly concerned.

“What does level ‘gimel‘ mean?” I asked. Gimel is the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph, bet, gimel)…and so his answer was very logical, if not very informative.

“One below bet,” he answered.

“Very funny,” I responded,”should I worry?” It is a code between us. It means, tell me I shouldn’t – because I already am…if only a bit. Of course, Elie has never told me I should worry, not once in almost three years, so I guess I can’t rely too much on his answer.

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Elie countered.

Yes, he is. It’s late at night. Elie has long since gone to bed. He returns up north tomorrow; back again in two weeks…I am, for now, once again firmly in the flat of the roller coaster, the time when there seems to be nothing to worry about.

There were special moments this weekend; Elie cuddling with his younger sister chief among them. He helped with the shopping and the cooking; ate tons of meat, slept, and talked. In short, we are, once again, back to normal…with one more thing to tease him about, “Mary had a little lamb”…perhaps I’ll see if I can find him a little stuffed lamb.

We are a democratic country; so much so, we allow our enemies into our government and from the podium of our parliament, they have the freedom to call for policies that would destroy us.
Our current enemies, those who pose the most immediate threat lie to our north. This is Hizbollah land, where according to their leader Hassan Nasrallah, “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”
Our enemies lie to the northeast. This is Syria. My sons have spent many months on the Golan Heights, including some tense days waiting to see how the Syrians would react after Israel sent planes to destroy a building widely believed to be the beginnings of a nuclear reactor. My oldest son fought near Gaza to help stop the rockets from being fired against Israel.
Our enemies lie further to the east. This is Iran, led by fanatics who promise that they will do all they can to accomplish in a few minutes more than what Adolf Hitler accomplished in six years of war. The Iranian leadership has made it clear in words and actions that they are after a nuclear bomb and that their goal is to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Believe them.